MUSIC. BACKSTAGE PASS.

Dreaming darkly of LA

June 22, 2001|By Kevin McKeough. Special to the Tribune.

From his early-'80s beginnings with blues-punk noisemakers the Dream Syndicate throughout his solo career, Steve Wynn has drawn comparisons to certain rock icons. But on his new CD, "Here Come the Miracles," the person Wynn most brings to mind is not Bob Dylan, Lou Reed or Neil Young, but the hard-boiled detective novelist Raymond Chandler.

Wynn fills the record with scenes that seem like something out of Chandler's "The Big Sleep," or Roman Polanski's "Chinatown." "Blood on the sleeve of a cotton shirt/cars lining up outside in the dirt," he sings on "Blackout," while the narrator of "Sunset to the Sea" vows "If I see those flashing lights, I'm not giving way/what's a few more shots gonna mean for me?"

"I've never had [reviewers make] so many comparisons to fiction writers before," Wynn acknowledges. "There's a lot of songs about California, a lot of dark noir-type material."

The 41 year-old Wynn was born in Los Angeles and has lived most of his life there, but he didn't begin writing about it until he moved to New York City seven years ago. "The LA I know has faded just enough and has been tempered with books and movies, that it's a different city," he observes.

In particular, it's the Los Angeles of endless freeways and three a.m. drives down Sunset Boulevard. "All these songs are travel songs," Wynn offers. "People in cars, in trains, driving a lot and not going anywhere."

"When you're in New York, when you're in Chicago, you know you're there," Wynn adds. "LA's so anonymous it's easy to get lost, and most people do."

"The music that changed my life was punk rock," he declares. "No matter what I'm doing, the attitude and the sound goes back to punk rock, using fearlessness and aggression and emotion over technique."

"Here Come the Miracles" spreads 19 songs across two CDs and more than 80 minutes. "This record, like those roads out in southern California, it needed the space to stretch out," Wynn explains. "You want to get out there and let the engine run a little bit."